Case Study: Iranian Protests
Turmoil Reporting Needs Citizen Journalists
There are a few reasons Zuckerman credits citizen journalists as such useful turmoil reporters in the Iranian protests. In international events such as the protests, the government often regulates major media outlets so there will be no leakage of sensitive information. Zuckerman even says explicitly that during the 2009 Iranian protests, the Iranian government reportedly “tightly controlled media coverage of events” (66). But citizen journalism, being written and published entirely by citizens who are actively involved in local affairs, does not have to be published via the conventional methods that professionals use, which may be censored by the government in times of turmoil. Zuckerman notes that although it may be difficult, a technologically capable person can actually slip around the government’s censorship attempts (67).
Another reason citizens were invaluable sources of new information in turmoil reporting, especially in events of great upheaval, is because of the constant flow of breaking news. In times of such distress, news of national or arguably international significance is being made every minute. The people being directly affected, as well as people across the globe who may be only indirectly affected, rely on turmoil reporting to know what is occurring, and major news outlets, which cannot be everywhere at once, rely on whatever citizen journalists happen to be on scene for updates. As an example, Zuckerman cites Newsweek’s Twitter Timeline, which laid out events of the Iranian protests through chronological tweets from Twitter (66). These tweets, which are bits of citizen journalism, were some of the only available updates of breaking news. |
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